A ghost of a smile crosses her face. "Sounds about right."
"I miss Naomi."
"I know you do." Nia shifts slightly, wincing. I told her all about my work friend and she was outraged I was replacing her—jokingly, of course. "She's living her best life though. Woman deserves it after everything she went through."
"Yeah." I reach for Nia's hand, so small now in mine. "She does."
We sit in silence for a while, listening to the sounds of the city filtering through the window. Somewhere down the block, someone's playing music too loud. A car alarm goes off and gets shut down. Normal city symphony, the soundtrack of our whole lives.
"I'm glad you came back," Nia says finally. "I know you didn't want to. I know being here is?—"
"Stop." I squeeze her hand gently. "There's nowhere else I'd be."
"Still haven't seen him?"
She doesn't have to clarify whohimis. There's only ever been one him that mattered.
"No. It's been almost a year and nothing. Maybe he's—" I stop, unable to finish that thought. Maybe he's moved on. Maybe he found someone else. Maybe he's married with kids and a life that doesn't include the girl who broke his heart to save his future.
I kind of expected Declan to show up the second I moved back. After eight years, he shouldn't have, but he always knew where I was. Always watched over me.
But he just let me go. Even though I asked for it, it still hurts.
"Maybe he's waiting," Nia says softly.
"For what?"
"For you to be ready."
I want to tell her I'll never be ready. That seeing Declan again would destroy whatever fragile equilibrium I've built. That I came back for her, not for ghosts and second chances.
But I'm too tired to lie and Nia can read me too well anyway.
So I just sit there holding her hand in the dark, feeling her pulse flutter weak and unsteady beneath my fingers, and try not to think about all the people I've lost and the one I gave away.
8
DECLAN
The house is silent when I wake. Not peaceful—silent. There's a difference that anyone who's lived alone in a space built for a family would understand. Every footstep echoes. Every door closing sounds like a gunshot. The emptiness has weight, substance, like something living that fills all the unused rooms and presses against my chest until breathing becomes a deliberate act.
I bought this place three months after Zola left. Couldn't stay in the old house where her coffee mug still sat in the cabinet, where her shampoo bottle remained in the shower because I couldn't bring myself to throw it away, where every corner held some ghost of her. The couch where she'd curl up with textbooks. The kitchen where I'd learned to cook just to make sure she ate. The bed where she'd sleep pressed against my side like she was afraid I'd disappear.
But I never sold it either. Just locked the door and left everything exactly as it was, like some pathetic shrine to what I'd destroyed by being exactly who I was—a man whose last name meant she could never have a normal life.
This house is massive. Six bedrooms, formal dining room, library with floor-to-ceiling shelves that remain mostly empty because I don't read like she did. There's a garden I've never stepped foot in, a pool I've never swam in, rooms I've never even opened the doors to. I bought it because Stellan's place is two streets over, because the property value made it a solid investment, because I needed somewhere to exist that didn't smell like her vanilla body wash or echo with her laugh.
I dress in the dark out of habit, pulling on slacks and a button-down without bothering to turn on lights. My closet is organized with military precision—suits arranged by color, shirts pressed and hung exactly one inch apart, shoes lined up like soldiers. Everything has its place. Everything is controlled. It's the only way I know how to function anymore.
The face in the bathroom mirror is mine but also not. Same strong jaw, same heavy brows, same dark green eyes that used to soften when they looked at her. But there's something flat behind them now, something cold that settled in the day I read her letter and realized I'd lost the only thing that mattered.
We're trying to force something that was never going to fit.
I still have that letter. Keep it in my desk drawer underneath files about shipments and territory disputes, the edges worn soft from how many times I've unfolded it, trying to find some hidden message I might have missed. Some clue that would tell me how to fix what she broke when she decided my future was more important than our present.
Eight years. She stayed gone for eight years, and I did the one thing she asked me to do. Never called. Never sent anyone looking. Told everyone who worked for me that if they saw her, I didn't want to know. Not where she was living, not who she was with, nothing. She asked me for one thing in all the time we were together—asked me not to come after her—and I couldn't ignore it no matter how much it destroyed me.
She never asked for anything before that. Not money when I knew her bank account was in the negatives. Not help when she was working three jobs and taking a full course load. Not comfort when her mother died and she locked herself in the bathroom and cried so hard I thought she'd break ribs. She carried everything alone because asking for help meant depending on someone, and depending on someone meant they could leave.
